


Reddington in Kewar Tunnel

by Kaci



Category: The Blacklist (US TV), Wars of Light and Shadow - Janny Wurts
Genre: Season/Series 06
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-24
Updated: 2021-03-13
Packaged: 2021-03-15 15:01:32
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,014
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29685753
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kaci/pseuds/Kaci
Summary: Reddington is on the run and winds up somewhere unexpected
Kudos: 1





	1. On the run

**Author's Note:**

> This starts with a situation in Blacklist season 6 and quickly veers off.
> 
> I wanted to put Reddington in the Kewar Tunnel from the Wars of Light and Shadow series. If you haven't read those books yet, please read the first five before you read this - you should really experience Kewar Tunnel for the first time in its original glory! Titles are: Curse of the Mistwraith, Ships of Merior (broken into Ships of Merior and Warhost of Vastmark for paperback to fit the binding), Fugitive Prince, Grand Conspiracy, and Peril's Gate.

Reddington left the unconscious guards behind and walked briskly out of the jail. Any minute now, Dembe should engineer a distraction to take the police to the other side of town. He kept an ear out for sirens as he veered in the direction of the meetup point. The aroma of fresh pastries teased him as he passed a small bakery, and he thought longingly of the sweet treats he hadn’t had in weeks. He shook his head; time for decent food once he was safely out of reach. He really should be hearing sirens by now. His shoulders tensed and he cursed the need for haste that had precluded him from taking a weapon from one of the downed guards.

A klaxon split the air – not Dembe’s distraction; the prison breach had been discovered. He forced himself not to start running. Any of these parked cars could be undercover police, and bolting would attract their attention. He continued towards his destination, eyes straight ahead. His ears told him when a nondescript vehicle began slowly rolling up behind him. He shot into an alley just a moment before the car door opened. “Raymond Reddington, you are charged with unlawful escape from federal custody!” He knew well enough what the officer would say next, so he concentrated on gaining what speed he could; aerobic exercise had never been his favorite activity, unless it involved a beautiful woman and a lack of clothing. Dodging onto a narrow service corridor, he heard the officer catching up. Desperate, he frantically tried doorknobs as he passed. And almost tripped as his momentum carried him forwards while the opening door pulled him to the side. The door was painted black, with a pair of demonic-looking eyes in a red too bright to intimidate. Some kind of nightclub, most likely, mistakenly left open during the day. Well, beggars couldn’t be choosers. Reddington ducked in and shut the door behind him. Outside, the red eyes closed, leaving a solid black – and locked – door.

The room was dim and cavernous, though not fully dark. The walls resembled rough-cut stone, but a quick touch showed them to be extremely clever tromp l’oeil. Someone had invested a lot of money or time. A dark plaque with an obsidian texture caught his eye. Engraved in silvery script were the words “Scito te ipsum”. “Know thyself,” he muttered. Sound advice, though odd for a nightclub. He started moving forwards, but the sound of other footsteps stopped him cold. The last thing he wanted was to be found and returned to the police. A figure started around the corner a good ways ahead of him, and Reddington turned to leave. Hopefully, the police would have moved on by now. He went to open the door and found it locked, with no indication of the mechanism. Standing here fighting with the door would only call attention to himself; better to look like he belonged here. He straightened and headed towards the stranger.

From this distance, he could tell the other was a man, walking with a gait that seemed oddly familiar. “Excuse me,” Reddington began, intending to explain that there was a problem with the door. Instead he froze in place and almost stepped backwards in shock. The man approaching him had a face Reddington hadn’t seen in the mirror in over twenty years. His first thought was that Dr. Koehler had had another client. But why would anyone choose his specific face, the face of a man living a normal life, before he had become a player in the criminal underworld? There was no avoiding the stranger now; might as well meet the question head on. Reddington put on a disarming grin and proceeded as if that was what he had intended all along. “Excuse me,” he said again, “and forgive me for being so forward, but I notice that you’ve had some work done. I’ve had a bit myself; otherwise I’m sure I’d never be able to tell. I’m looking for a new surgeon who’s capable of discretion. Would you mind sharing the name of yours?”

The stranger shook his head. “Your manipulations and deflections won’t work here. You’re unnerved because I look like you from twenty-odd years ago. That’s because I am you from twenty-odd years ago. You might think of me as the ghost of Christmas past. You’ve chosen the Tunnel, and now the only way out is through. Scito te ipsum.” He walked past Reddington and headed towards the locked door.

“I didn’t choose to be here,” Reddington protested. “I just ducked into the first hideout I could find. The police were after me.”

“Running from your choices is itself a choice, and desperation forces us to take the true measure of ourselves. Good luck.” Without turning around, the stranger lifted his arm in a wave and then passed through the closed and locked door.

Reddington blinked and shook his head. That hadn’t happened. Obviously. People did not move through solid objects. He’d have to check in with his doctors again once he got back; he hadn’t heard of hallucinations as a symptom, but things might be getting worse. Meanwhile, he’d better look for another exit from this building. 

As he turned the corner, the walls narrowed, becoming less like a room and more like a corridor. The air grew chill, and the floor became slightly slippery beneath his feet. Without a clear transition from hallway to open space, he found himself in the ice rink, eighty-six bodies spread out on the ground before him. “Your dead,” a familiar voice said at his shoulder. He turned quickly, expecting to see the stranger returned, but no one was there. “Not all of them, of course. These are only the ones Kate handled for you. In some ways, the least personal of the lot.”

Reddington’s gaze fell on the nearest corpse. A man, as most of them were. Early-forties, mustache, still dressed in the green polo shirt, blood soaked from a double-tap to the heart. An electric frisson seemed to pass over Reddington, and he was that man, alive but on the run. He felt the exhaustion of sleepless nights, the tension of crossing and recrossing his tracks to throw Red off the scent. He felt the elation of finally approaching the safe house, legs aching from the miles he had to cover on foot. He fumbled the keys with cold-numb fingers, heard he creak as he opened the door, felt his body flood with adrenaline all over again as he saw the figure seated cross-legged in the living room armchair. Through the eyes of this man, now dead and cold on the ice, Reddington saw himself stand, draw his pistol, and wordlessly fire two shots. He felt the sudden, searing pain and the brain’s confusion at irreparable damage. Felt his fingers sticky with blood as he lifted his hand to the wound. Smelled the sharp tang of his own blood and the stink from emptying his bowels. Felt the terror as temperature dropped and his vision clouded, the regret over loves unfulfilled and words unsaid. He’d give up this path, go clean and honest, if he could just have a little more time to live. Reddington felt the last dark moments as life ebbed away.

And he was on the ice again, standing over the bodies. Before he could begin to make sense of experience, another body caught his attention. Another fear, another death, another regret. He died eighty-six times. Gunshots more often than anything else, the violation of a bullet followed by the bewildered ebbing out of his life. Poison a time or two, the promise of comfort or nourishment turned to panic and cyanosis. He was garroted, stabbed, pushed off a building, run over by a truck. He felt bones crack. He felt his lungs fill with water as he drowned. And always, the desperate wish for a different outcome, for more life.

At last, Reddington lived his eighty-sixth death. He had almost become accustomed to horror and pain, but he still felt relief when he checked his count the second time and realized he was finished. Then came the secondary effects. He felt the anguish of spouses and lovers, friends and parents. Sometimes total shock and betrayal that one they loved could be taken so violently. Sometimes aching resignation to the misdeeds of the one killed finally catching them up. He felt the panic of those who were left exposed – to unpayable bills, to pointed questions from law enforcement, to the predators of the underworld, eager to exploit anyone left undefended. The children were the worst. The young ones who didn’t understand why their parent was gone or why they no longer got enough to eat. The older ones who knew what death was and who listened fearfully at doorways, trying to think of ways to protect their remaining parent – or who were hauled off to live with strangers, sometimes taken away from their siblings. The teenagers, some horrified at a world they’d been sheltered from, some already forming the connections to seek vengeance of their own. When at last he reached the end of the suffering he’d caused by those eighty-six deaths, Reddington dropped to his knees. He cradled his head in his elbows, knowing himself to be a loathsome and hideous creature.


	2. Chapter 2

A tap on the shoulder drew Reddington's attention. He straightened up and found himself face-to-face with a twelve-year-old girl. Anya, he remembered. The little girl he and Elizabeth had rescued from Lady Ambrosia and returned to her mother. She signed something, seemed to notice Reddington’s confusion, and signed again more slowly. “I am grateful for you.” Reddington smiled weakly and managed to sign “Thank you,” thereby using the extent of his fluency in sign. Anya tugged at his hand, clearly intending to pull him to his feet. Reddington became vaguely aware that the child didn’t belong here and should be returned to her mother. He heaved himself upright, intending to try and figure out how Anya had even wound up here, when he noticed that he no longer stood on ice. Instead, his feet rested on soil, branches, and spongy moss. The rink was gone, replaced with a forest path. Anya pulled him along until the path ended in a clearing. A large stone well sat in the center, and a young man stood looking down into it. Anya released Reddington’s hand, pointed at the man, and skipped away. 

“Hello, Theo,” Reddington said gently. “I suppose I’m responsible for your death, too. I’m sorry; I never meant for that to happen.”

“It was my choice,” Theo said. “You saw me as a person, not a mistake. Not ugly. You told me I deserved to be loved. You may not like my choice, but your words freed me to make it.” 

“I would have wanted more for you.”'

“I had to make my own response to what my mother had done. Not just the way she treated me, but what she made me complicit in. All those children… You put an end to that when you saved them.”

“I wish we could have saved them all.”

“We all want to do more than we’re capable of. You did what you could, and you did it well. Take my gratitude with you as you go.” Theo briefly clasped Reddington’s hand and walked away.

Reddington waited to experience Theo’s death, but it didn’t come. He smiled at the memory of the young man and continued along the path. The day slowly faded, and as night fell, the forest changed. A house loomed up ahead, and Reddington knew the deep woods would be sightlessly guarded by disturbing human taxidermy. He would much rather not enter the house, but he felt inexorably drawn to it. Taking himself in hand, he marched up to the entrance. If he had to do this, best to do it on his own terms. “Hello, Ace,” he said as he opened the door.

“Ah, Reddington, glad you could make it. Let’s talk about what you did to me.”

“I’d suggest we talk about what the organizations you supported did to innocent people, but I believe we had that conversation already. You deserved to die.”

“A meaningless distinction. You’re convinced that everyone you kill deserves it.”

“Then why are we here? For me to experience a bullet in the chest? I know what that’s like; experiencing one more holds little terror.”

“Let’s suppose for a moment that the justice or injustice of my death isn’t at issue. Let’s imagine I had no family or friends to suffer when I was gone. Who else was affected?” 

Reddington recoiled at the thought of justifying himself to this scum, but the name fell from his lips nonetheless. “Dembe.”

Geoff chuckled. “Yes, Dembe, your conscience, such as he is.”

“You’re not worthy to say his name,” Reddington growled.

“And are you? He asked you to spare me. Did you doubt his sincerity?”

“No,” Reddington said flatly. “But he would never be safe with you alive.”

“So it’s his wisdom you distrust? Or perhaps his loyalty? Maybe you feared I had leverage over him that would cause him to break.”

Reddington’s eyes flashed. “Dembe would never betray me.” He pushed down the memory of the time he’d believed Dembe may have done just that. 

“But he also had no desire for revenge. So why kill me?”

“He’s a good man. Better than me. Far better than you. For what he suffered, the murder of his family, the slavery, the torture… It was unbearable to think you were in the same world as him.”

“So you showed your love for the man by doing the very thing he just asked you not to do? I don’t think so. We are what we do, you know.” Ace chuckled again. “You blamed me for Dembe’s suffering, and I suppose I was indirectly involved. You could tell yourself that killing me was the last step in rescuing Dembe, that it somehow undid the horrible things that happened to him. And then you wouldn’t have to face the fact that you’d benefitted from his pain.”

“In what way could his suffering possibly be of any benefit to me?”

“Only in the most obvious way. How else could a man like you ever find a loyal friend? Who would be your confessor if Dembe hadn’t been sold into slavery as a child? Who would be your family if Dembe’s family hadn’t been killed?”

“That’s enough!” Reddington shouted. Before he was even aware of making a decision, he had brought up the same weapon and shot Geoff in the chest again. He barely even noticed the pain of the bullet piercing his flesh as he wept for the innocence of his only true friendship.

When he finally stood up, he was in the prison cafeteria, seated across from a young man with medium-dark skin and nerdy glasses. “That’s not why you saved him,” Vontae said.

“I’m sorry?” Reddington questioned.

“Dembe. You didn’t save him because you thought he would be useful to you. You saved him because he was helpless and innocent, just like me.”

Reddington smirked and gestured at their surroundings. “Have you forgotten that we met in a federal prison?”

“Okay, so innocent’s a relative term. Compared to a lot of the guys in here, though…”

“And I didn’t save you. I recruited you, and I did benefit. I’m a free man, while you’re still in jail.” He didn’t mention his plan to get the young man out of jail as soon as he had any leverage to work with.  
Vontae gave a good imitation of Reddington’s you’re-such-an-idiot stare. “Right, when those dudes were stealing my lunch, your only thought was how you could benefit. Face it, you’re a big softy. No one else ever cared what happened to me, not even my family.”

“What can I say, I root for the underdog.”

“You know it’s more than that, even if you won’t admit it yet. Time for you to go, though.” Vontae pushed himself up from the table and headed out. “I mean, you made friends with a rat, come on, man,” he said in parting.

He may have recruited a rat to his cause, but rats were simple to handle. Unlike warring gangs, he thought, recalling the fellow inmate he’d had to kill when no other justice was at hand. Reddington left the cafeteria and turned down the prison hallway. As he walked, the temperature increased until he was sweating uncomfortably in his suit. The corridor gave way to a familiar room, half-consumed by flames. “Lizzie!” he called out, terror for her driving all other thoughts from his mind.

Someone grabbed his shoulder from behind. “We’re not up to that part yet,” the voice said. Reddington turned and in the last instant stopped himself from reflexively throwing a punch at the man whose face he wore. The original Raymond Reddington gripped his shoulder harder and forced him to face the scene playing out before them. The man who now went by the name of Reddington watched helplessly as young Masha picked up the pistol and shot her father. “This was your fault,” said the Raymond Reddington behind him as they watched the man, also Raymond Reddington, fall to the floor. “She pulled the trigger, but your choices brought us to this point.” 

“I never wanted this. Ever,” present-day Reddington said. “I saved her from the fire, protected her. Loved her.”

“Lied to her. Violated her memory,” the original responded.

“I didn’t want her to live with the knowledge of what she had done to you, to her father. No child should have to endure that.”

“No, no child should ever be brought into a position where she could do that to her father. But you did. It’s because of you that she was separated from the parents that loved her. All the other ways you’ve interfered in her life were just your attempts to make yourself feel better. Nothing can ever repair what you did to her.”


End file.
